OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

I once lived in a blue house. Now when I say this I'm not talking about a light blue house, nor a powder blue house, or even a periwinkle blue house. No, I'm talking the most outlandish, brightest, up-in-your-eye. offensive blue you can imagine.

Before you start with the "what an idiot to buy a house so outrageous" spiel, let me say that the house was a perfectly ordinary color (although I don't remember what it was) when I bought it. No, sir, I would never be so foolish as to buy one that color. You see, I, personally, with my own two hands, painted it that color, that incredibly obvious color.

And it all started because the people across the street painted their house a bright pink. Yes, pink, flamingo pink. Now I wasn't what you'd call the neighborly type, being a modern man before his time (it was the 70's and neighbors still came to know each other by name), but even I heard the buzz around the neighborhood when the "pink house" arrived in our area. And eventually I decided to do something about it.

No, I wasn't upset at the pink house, I thought it rather audacious and saucy, perhaps even avante garde. I objected to the neighbor's remarks, as if somehow beige was a more appropriate color for a house. Who said? Who made up that rule? So, a trip to the paint store, several gallons of bright blue paint, and a daunting task.

The house was two story and it took a long ladder to reach those upper eaves. There I stood, shaky knees on a shaky ladder, wondering why I had ever thought it possible to do such a task (you see, I'm not handy in any way - really, ask my wife). The house hadn't been painted in a while and really needed to be "scraped" before painting. But there was no way I was going up that ladder twice. Let it peel.

So there I was, holding onto the ladder and the paint bucket with one hand, stretched out as far as possible, covering that maximum area, slapping gobs of paint onto the thirsty house with the other. Thirty feet off the ground, always mindful of just how fast gravity could reduce that distance and just how hard that ground would be. But I survived.

The house had dormer windows. It also had a very steep roof (Milwaukee - snow) and very slick wooden shingles (moss growing on them, actually). Unfortunately it was necessary to deal with that roof and those shingles in order to reach the small patches of wood on the sides of the dormer windows. Easy enough to get up there, but staying there was like trying to hold onto a 727's wing as it takes off.

So how does one accomplish such a task? Simple. One ties one end of a rope around the chimney, another to one's belt. Voila, problem solved. Don't ask HOW one gets the rope tied to these two separate objects. No, really, don't ask, because the details of that memory has been wiped mercifully from my brain. Besides, it wasn't really tied onto the chimney, just looped around it. Wait, you'll see.

So there I am, in a half-kneeling, half-lying position beside the dormer window. One hand is holding the paint bucket firmly, the other slapping gobs of paint on the wood, the other holding the free end of the rope running up around the chimney and then back down to my belt.

Hold it, one, paint bucket, two, paint brush, three? No, that's wrong. One, two, ... That's right, I only have two hands, don't I. Ah, yes, the end of the rope and the paint bucket were in the same hand, my LEFT hand. So, I'm holding a bucket full of paint while at the same time trying to keep taut the rope preventing me from sliding ungracefully off the roof - WITH THE SAME HAND.

Actually, that was the easy part. Now came the hard part. I needed to move around to the other side of the window. So I needed to loosen my hold on the rope (which was not easy to force myself to do, believe me), semi-stand, semi-crouch, and move gingerly around the dormer protrusion. CAREFUL, THE ROPE'S HUNG UP! WATCH THE PAINT! Oh, well, nobody will see a little bit up here on the roof. WATCH IT, DON'T STEP IN IT! FORGET THAT, DON'T FALL IN IT! WATCH THE ROPE! CRAP, THESE THINGS ARE SLICK!

But I got the job done. Going to college for 8 years to get a PHD was easy, painting that house on Diversey Street was the crowning achievement of my life. Some day I'll tell you about the forest in my living room there. Or the small storage room full of paper airplanes. Or my son's efforts to totally empty his room. Or the incredibly wild basement, complete with black light (70's, remember) on the dance floor and bead curtains.

Oh, and have you ever heard of a game called "strip pool?" Someday I'll tell you about how I learned to play a fair game of pool in that basement, under VERY stressful circumstances.